Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853. Various
con assai basso parlare
Addio Emilia; e più oltre non disse,
Chè l' anima convenne si partisse."
Chaucer loses nothing of this description in his condensed translation:
"For from his feet up to his brest was come
The cold of deth, that had him overnome.
And yet moreover in his armes two
The vital strength is lost, and all ago.
Only the intellect, withouten more,
That dwelled in his herte sike and sore,
Gan feillen, when the herte felte deth;
Dusked his eyen two, and failled his breth.
But on his ladie yet cast he his eye;
His laste word was; Mercy, Emelie!"
Troilus and Creseide seems to have been translated from the Filostrato of Boccaccio, when Chaucer was a young man, as we are informed by Dan John Lydgate in the Prologue to his Translation of Boccaccio's Fall of Princes, where he speaks of his "Maister Chaucer" as the "chefe poete of Bretayne," and tells us that—
"In youthe he made a translacion
Of a boke which called is Trophe,
In Lumbard tongue, as men may rede and se,
And in our vulgar, long or that he deyde
Gave it the name of Troylous and Cresseyde."
Chaucer's translation is sometimes very close, sometimes rather free and paraphrastic, as may be seen in the following examples:
"But right as floures through the cold of night
Yclosed, stoupen in hir stalkes lowe,
Redressen hem ayen the Sunne bright,
And spreaden in hir kinde course by rowe."
"Come fioretto dal notturno gelo
Chinato e chiuso, poi che il Sol l' imbianca,
S'apre, e si leva dritto sopra il stelo."
"She was right soche to sene in her visage
As is that wight that men on bere ybinde."
"Essa era tale, a guardarla nel viso,
Qual donna morta alla fossa portata."
"As fresh as faucon coming out of mew."
"Come falcon ch' uscisse dal cappello."
"The Song of Troilus," in the first book of Troilus and Creseide, is a paraphrase from one of the Sonnets of Petrarca:
"S' Amor non è, che dunque è quel ch' i' sento?
Ma s' egli è Amor, per Dio che cosa, e quale?
Se buona, ond' è l' effetto aspro mortale?"
"If no love is, O God, what feele I so?
And if love is, what thing and which is he?
If love be good, from whence cometh my wo?"
Chaucer evidently had the following lines of the Paradiso in view when writing the invocation to the Virgin in The Second Nonnes Tale:
"Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
Umile e alta più che creatura,
Termine fisso d' eterno consiglio,
Tu se' colei, che l' umana Natura,
Nobilitasti sì, che il suo Fattore
Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura."
"Thou maide and mother, doughter of thy Son,
Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure,
In whom that God of bountee chees to won;
Thou humble and high over every creature,
Thou nobledest so fer forth our nature,
That no desdaine the maker had of kinde
His Son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde."
Traces of Chaucer's proficiency in Italian are discoverable in almost all his poems; but I shall conclude with two citations from The Assembly of Foules:
"The day gan failen, and the darke night,
That reveth beastes from hir businesse,
Berafte me my booke for lacke of light."
"Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno
Toglieva gli animai che sono in terra
Dalle fatiche loro."—Inf. ii. 1.
"With that my hand in his he toke anon,
Of which I comfort caught, and went in fast."
"E poiche la sua mano alla mia pose
Con lieto volto, ond' io mi confortai."
By the way, Chaucer commences The Assembly of Foules with part of the first aphorism of Hippocrates, "Ὁ βιος βραχὺς ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή" (but this, I suppose, had been noticed before):
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne."
Chaucer was forty years old, or upwards, in 1372, when he was sent as an envoy to treat with the duke, citizens, and merchants of Genoa; and if, as is probable, he had translated Troilus and Creseide out of the "Lombarde tonge" in his youth (according to the testimony of Lydgate), it is not unreasonable to infer that his knowledge of Italian may have led to his being chosen to fill that office. But, however this may be, abundant proof has been adduced that Chaucer was familiarly acquainted with Italian.
I may briefly remark, in conclusion, that the dates and other circumstances favour the supposed interview at Padua, between Fraunceis Petrark the laureate poet, and Dan Chaucer,
"Floure of poets throughout all Bretaine."
Tunbridge Wells.
THE REBELLION OF '45.—UNPUBLISHED LETTER
Dear Sirs,
This day about twelve our army came up with the rebels, about a mile above Lord President's house, in a muir called Drumrossie. They began the engagement first, by firing from a battery of six guns they had erected upon their right; but our cannon played so hott upon them, that they were obliged soon to fly, by which means we gote possession of their artillery, and so drove them before us for three miles of way. The cavalry gave them closs chase to the town of Inverness: upon which the French ambassador (who is not well) sent out an officer, and a drum with him, offering to surrender at discretion; to which the duke made